The European Commission provided its feedback on the letter that ESC sent together with IRU and Fuels Europe. It concerned the role of carbon neutral fuels and hydrogen internal combustion engines in the CO2 standards for heavy-duty vehicles (HDV).
The EC states that “while the HDV sector has a high potential for the deployment of zero-emission vehicles, it is not entirely sure at the current stage that zero-emission lorries will be available for every possible application across such a heterogeneous sector. In view of such considerations, some margin is left in the Standards by setting a 90 % 2040 target. This will leave sufficient room for some specific use cases where the shift to zero-emission vehicles might be too difficult.
In this context, it is also worth recalling that many vehicle applications are kept out of the extended scope of the revised Regulation. Special purpose vehicles, heavy lorries with particular axle configurations, smaller lorries and buses and vocational vehicles are exempt from meeting the targets because of several technical reasons.”
For more information, please see the joint letter and the response from the European Commission.